There’s a lovely pastry and chocolate shop in Bethesda called Cacao, which I discovered a few winters ago during the Christmas season. I usually get pastries when I stop in there, so this would mark the first time I’d tried their truffles and macaroons.

Aren’t the macaroons cute? X) I could’ve selected the flavors myself, but they had such a variety of them, I just asked them to mix them all up for me. I liked them! Very nice and light on the outside, and creamy and smooth on the inside. There was one particular one I enjoyed, which had a slightly floral taste.

I love the taste of caramel, but I find most of them too hard to chew! (;___;) Not so in this case though, I’m happy to say. I’d never heard of Fran’s chocolates before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I ended up being pleasantly surprised by their caramels, which I found extremely soft, delicious and addicting.

Happy New Year, everyone! \(^O^)/ Hope you had a great start to 2010, and a lovely winter holiday. I apologize for neglecting this blog for the past few weeks. I kept meaning to update, but it’s been a bit of a lazy Christmas season for me. I’m resolving to be more active hereon for the new year, and to catch up on my backlog of posts I’ve been meaning to get to for a while.

New Year happens to be the biggest holiday of the year for Japanese people, and like most celebrations, it centers around the food. Wiki has an article about the traditional “osechi” food here, which is served on New Year’s Day. My mom prepares it every year, though this year’s spread was much more scaled back than usual.

I know…am very late with this post. But I figured I might as well put it up, since I had the photo on hand, and because it looks so cute. XD;

This Bûche de Noël cake is from Whole Foods. I’ve gotten log cakes from different places in the last several years, and this is certainly one of the more festive looking ones. Unfortunately, it looked a lot better than it tasted! The outer frosting was made from a very oily butter cream, and had the consistency of Crisco. Ugh. The chocolate frosting on the inside was a little lighter, though not too much better. The flavor of the cake itself wasn’t bad though, and had good texture.